“We came here and created a blank slate. We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here. I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but, candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”

  — Former senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), 2021

The notion that European colonists arrived in the Americas to find wild, undomesticated land, sans residents, is a pervasive one. In fact, there were likely around 50 million people living in the Americas when the Spanish arrived, before European diseases caused mass death across the continent. The roughly 10 million indigenous people living in the present-day United States circa 1492 were reduced, by 1900, to fewer than 300,000 — a 97% decrease in just four centuries — before rebounding to around 5 million today. But Native Americans have contoured American culture all along. From the Iroquois’ impact on American republican institutions to various influences on American agriculture, trade networks, and land-management practices, indigenous people have been central to the making of the modern United States.

“Slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

  — Florida’s State Academic STANDARDS, SOCIAL Studies, 2023